ht surely discern in the fatality that
attended the children of Henry VIII. a fulfilment of the doom of
childlessness pronounced in the Book of the Law against him who should
marry his brother's wife. "God," wrote the French ambassador in 1528,
"has long ago Himself passed sentence on it;"[508] and there is no
reason to doubt Henry's assertion, that he had come to regard the
death of his children as a Divine judgment, and that he was impelled
to question his marriage by the dictates of conscience. The "scruples
of conscience," which Henry VII. had urged as an excuse for delaying
the marriage, were merely a cloak for political reasons; but scruples
of conscience are dangerous playthings, and the pretence of Henry VII.
became, through the death of his children, a terrible reality to Henry
VIII.

[Footnote 507: _L. and P._, iii., 432.]

[Footnote 508: Du Bellay to Montmorenci, 1st Nov.,
1528, _L. and P._, iv., 4899.]

Queen Catherine, too, had scruples of conscience about the marriage,
though of a different sort. When she first heard of Henry's intention
to seek a divorce, she is reported to have said that "she had (p. 179)
not offended, but it was a judgment of God, for that her former marriage
was made in blood"; the price of it had been the head of the innocent
Earl of Warwick, demanded by Ferdinand of Aragon.[509] Nor was she
alone in this feeling. "He had heard," witnessed Buckingham's chancellor
in 1521, "the Duke grudge that the Earl of Warwick was put to death,
and say that God would punish it, by not suffering the King's issue to
prosper, as appeared by the death of his sons; and that his daughters
prosper not, and that he had no issue male."[510]

[Footnote 509: _Sp. Cal._, i., 249; _L. and P. of
Richard III. and Henry VII._, vol. i., pp. xxxiii.,
113; Hall, _Chron_., p. 491; Bacon, _Henry VII._,
ed. 1870, p. 376; _Transactions of the Royal Hist.
Soc._, N.S., xviii., 187.]

[Footnote 510: _L. and P._, iii., 1284.]

Conscience, however, often moves men in directions indicated by other
than conscientious motives, and, of the other motives which influenced
Henry's mind, some were respectable and some the reverse. The most
legitimate was his desire to provide for the succession to the throne.
It was obvious to him and his council that, if